They could do either one…whatever they’re comfortable with. They could post the Net Price Calculator result and DM the details.
The point is that when people have SIMPLE finances (paid by an employer), few or no assets, then the Net Price Calculator should not be off by such ridiculous amounts. One of the advantages of going to a prior prior system with FAFSA being released on Oct 1, is that these estimates for simple situations should be close to accurate.
In the other case I learned about yesterday, the instate public Net Price Calculator showed that thee student would get about $14k of “free money” (mix of grants and merit). None of that was loans or WS. Yet, when the family got the FA package, there was zero free money. How could they be off by that much when finances are simple?